The chipKIT™ Pi is the latest Arduino™ compatible chipKIT™ platform from Microchip and element14 specially designed for Raspberry Pi. It features a 32-bit PIC32MX2xx microcontroller in a prototyping-friendly, low pin count SPDIP package. The PIC32’s performance, memory and integrated peripherals allow users to create applications including touch sensing, audio processing and advanced control. The board is supported by the free chipKIT™ Multi-Platform IDE (MPIDE) that can be hosted on the Raspberry Pi and allows users to create, compile and program Arduino sketch-based chipKIT™ applications within the Raspberry Pi operating system. This software development was completed by voumnteers from the chipKIT™ and Arduino communities.

chipKIT™ Pi is the world’s first to enable the development of 3.3V Arduino compatible applications for the Raspberry Pi using a 32-bit, high-performance PIC32 MCU in a prototyping-friendly package. Because the Raspberry Pi’s processor is a 3.3V chip, its digital I/O and communications (I2C™, UART, SPI) pins require 3.3V. Hence the existing prototyping-friendly Arduino boards, which are all based on 5V 8-bit MCUs, require users to create or purchase additional components to translate the voltages. The chipKIT™ Pi can interface directly to the Raspberry Pi I/O Expansion header without any additional components, reducing both cost and design complexity.

The chipKIT™ development platform is an open-source hardware and software solution intended for beginners and users with little or no knowledge of embedded controllers wanting to explore embedded applications. The chipKIT™ environment advances the art of open-source, physical computing by expanding support to more chip platforms and introducing new, high-performance libraries. It combines low-cost hardware with free software that is fast, powerful, and extendable.